Chapter Text
Summers here could take everything. The heat. Old Gods of nature prying the world open, peeling back whatever it wanted to suck life out like an orange. They were very small in comparison. No amount of totems or prayer could make the rain come, only when whatever divinity decided it was done with them would it release its hold.
And then the rain would come. Maybe.
As the skies went dark, and the wind roared; rattling the straw-brown wheat stalks against one another, rippling like waves. Even the trees submitted to its higher power; leaning into the force. Where the radio towers stood proud in the distance, the only thing unmoved among the bending of the natural world. Like they’d made deals with the wind to blow over and spare them; their dark metal blending into the moody skies. A kind of solidarity.
Spare them, when heat lightning could burn everything you loved to the ground.
Absently, she rubbed the splintering wood of the match between her thumb and her forefinger.
“Lottie, don’t,”
She smelled of gasoline- it reeked even over the metallic tang of blood.
“Don’t, don’t-”
It was a beg. Knelt on the ground, the wheat stalks crumpled around her. She may as well have come out of the belly of the earth itself; and Lottie was watching her crawl out.
Forever.
“Please, don’t-”
They didn’t even have shadows.
“-this isn’t-”
With one swift motion, the match struck.
“-real!”
Forever.
Ten years of cigarettes were held in the fibres of the carpet, but Natalie had become mostly blind to it. Heat cooked its way through the walls of the single-wide, despite the tired, obedient clunk of the electrical fan. Sometimes she felt sorry for it. As if it were a sentient beast, being forced to work for hours on end to keep the place from stagnating; and its dedicated work hardly even helped, anyways. Its lopsided clunking was as much a constant as the smell, and her skin was still sticky with sweat where she lay on her back, pressed into the carpet- relishing her few hours alone. Where she could strip down to her sports bra and shorts, thinking about the Oxycodone in her mother’s cabinet that she hadn’t been brave enough to steal yet.
She often weighed her life’s importance, and despite her morbid curiosities as the rush of opioids finally trickled their way into their midwestern suburbia, she remained surprisingly grateful that she didn’t consider her life meaningless enough yet to play with things she knew she shouldn’t.
This was just life in Wiskayok. The browns of summer had arrived, along with the Oxycodone, where trains rattled the trailer park and she could watch the dust beams dance through the window. A windchime clanged gently somewhere. Somewhere, at this very moment, there was a sermon preaching. People rotted away in the heat. Dogs barked. Cattle grazed. Football was important. On the fuzzy, struggling television set, the weatherman was saying it could rain.
She was sure it had been this way forever.
Modern things trickled into this world, but Wiskayok, in its poverty, was stuck in the past. It probably always would be.
“Fucking figures,” With a huff, Lottie’s foot came down hard against the brakepad of her father’s Camaro. A handsome thing- both the growling candy apple red ‘69 COPO that kicked dust all over town- and the man who stood on the doorstep, with corporate arms crossed over his chest, and the often unassumingly soft face, contorted into deep disapproval. He was supposed to be in Zurich.
“Out,” He snapped, already prowling down the driveway. Lottie let out a curse under her breath, killing the engine with a pointed twist of her wrist. “You know not to use the Camaro- under any circumstances.”
Well-trained in taking discipline, she had the silver keys spun around one finger and obediently slipped from the vehicle before he can even reach her. She doesn’t bother to apologize. She’s been caught, and would rather not lie about being remorseful. The car sat cooped up in the garage, away from the world, the same way she was.
Bizarre didn’t even begin to cover it- Angelo Matthews being in Wiskayok. It was strange enough that she was there, to begin with.
Holding the keyring between her thumb and forefinger, outstretched and willing, the man snatched them from her grip with such force that she winced. A crease pressed deeply between his brows, he then did a full, circular sweep of the vehicle- inspecting for any new scratch, or dent. Only when he had been satisfied that it was still up to standard, did he return to glower at her. “Is this what you do when I’m not here? Take the car out, like you’re not supposed to?”
“Believe it or not,” She fixated on the crack in the pavement, a few inches from his right foot. From the heat. The age and the heat, even the concrete couldn’t withstand it. “This was the first time.”
She could smell his breath, glowering down at her. Stale coffee breath- a signature to his presence. Could feel his disbelief, as though if he stared her down long enough, she would crack like the pavement under the intensity of those same dark eyes she shared. As it would happen- this was about the third time she’d ever taken the Camaro out. She had to be sneaky about it. Had to do it when Gramma wasn’t home, or Maria.
“Really?” He pressed, after a moment.
She nodded. Perspiration already starting to bead on her temples, under her arms, the divot of her spine. Cooking under the Wiskayok sun. “Yeah. Ask Gramma. I never take it.”
He, too, had developed a shine against his forehead. “I just happen to come home the one day you’ve decided to steal the car?”
Steal, she wants to argue, is a bit of an embellishment. Clearly- she brought it back. “Murphy’s Law.”
Lips pulling down into an even deeper frown- something Lottie hadn’t realized was possible, a moment ago- Angelo finally broke his glare. “Open the garage.” With a sharp point in the direction, he then waved his hand dismissively. “Go to your room. I don’t want to see you until dinner.”
Defeated, Lottie heeded the commands. Her father never stayed long. It wasn’t worth the argument. He would lament about how much he hated Wiskayok for a few days, and Lottie would bite her tongue about the fact that he had all but dumped her there six years ago, and then he would jet off again on his hotel-mogul duties. Zurich, London, New York, Cancun, some place in Spain, Norway, Greece. She didn’t know the specifics. He liked Zurich best. She suspected a new wife and family elsewhere.
Didn’t care enough to question it.
He chose to father her financially. Had banished her from the majority of his existence, like an unceremonious tossaway to a corner of the world. He might have counted on her saying nothing. If that was the sense, she supposed she performed to excellence.
Slumping down in front of her bedroom window, she leaned into it. Elbow pressed to the chipping white paint of the sill, palm flush to her cheek, she could spend hours there. Watching the stagnant treeline on the far side of the pasture. There wasn’t much left out there. Two geriatric horses, ancient and crumpled in the shade. No more cattle. There hadn’t been cattle since before she arrived.
Idly, she picked at a spot of chipped paint. Wondered if there would be punishment for her transgression, or if three-to-five days of scathing scrutiny would be enough. Wondered if whatever it was would be worth the boredom fueled joyride, as she had been aimless in her goals when she had taken the Camaro through town. It was too hot to play soccer, even if she were to wrangle up one of the girls to do so.
She had been hoping- a childish, shy, and fostered kind of hope- that she would simply see someone she knew around town. Could pretend that it was through coincidental happenstance that she would see Jackie and Shauna sharing an iced tea on a patio, or Tai in a parking lot. Even Natalie, kicking around somewhere, hiding from the heat, but hiding from her mother by not being under her own roof.
But there had been no one.
And so with a sinking, unavoidable disappointment, she had taken herself home to the shambling goliath that was Gramma Matthew’s farmhouse. Once proud, but slowly eroding, as bodies did. Lottie could imagine the foundation buckling like knees, paint chipped like wrinkles, and the place smelled of time. Old dust and past lives.
Her father’s worn name even haunted the threshold of her bedroom in old pencil.
Angelo Matthews, age 3, barely at Lottie’s knees.
PRAY
The words cast shadows upwards, stretching towards the night sky, disappearing into the dark. Natalie pondered it, for a moment; the cherry of her cigarette burning orange against the blue dark. Late spring night- the bubble of time that permitted Wiskayok from burning too hot, the air more like a sedative, warm breath.
FOR YOU MAY OPEN A DOOR THAT WON’T CLOSE AGAIN.
She was sure it was meant to be reassuring, but all she felt was that it was ominous. A proclamation outside of the church- one of three they had, not counting the Jehovah’s Witness building. Small place, lots of religion.
She’d told herself she was done with Bobby Farleigh; but the fact of the matter was, she wanted the money. Nobody would hire her because she was white trash. And, in her opinion- she’d rather be pushing weed and Adderall than standing vigil behind a gas station counter. Somehow, there was more dignity in it. People could sneer at her all she wanted, but at this point- most people knew if you wanted dope, she was the person to go to.
People had begun to tolerate her a little more, when she had things they wanted.
And so, as she began walking home again, she prodded at the bag of bud nestled into the inside pocket of her jacket. It was a little warm for it, but necessary for transport. In an attempt to balance things out, she had wadded up her T-shirt, stuffed it into her bag, left in the white spaghetti strap that she normally would have considered too revealing. Especially around Bobby.
In an attempt to dissuade any sexual advances on her by the peer-and-pervert population of Wiskayok, she usually kept herself as baggy as possible. A learned behaviour that came with her puberty, when her father had seemingly developed a morbid obsession with her body. With immense gratitude, she could say that he had never made any kind of advance- but his fixation on degrading her for showing any signs of womanhood had secretly made her think that he wished he could.
He was dead now.
But the habit, she found, did actually keep the attention away- for the most part. Which she liked. She liked to choose when she wanted it.
And so the cricket song filled the soundtrack of her walk home. It was late on a Tuesday, which meant the world was mostly hers. Punctuated by a few struggling streetlights, the gravel crunching under her boots. When the deep rumble of a vehicle- a statement one, at that- finally broke the night, Natalie turned back to look at it.
The headlights approached, growing larger until they revealed the poignant red Camaro that Natalie immediately had to consider lost. Because there were no cars like that, here- not really- not unless…
She watched the taillights like two red eyes rumble past her in the dark, their light bleeding out against the blue hue of the world. And, slowly, they came to a stop up ahead.
Natalie halted her feet as they did.
She was, after all, still a teenage girl walking alone after dark.
When it became clear that she was standing her ground where she was, it began to reverse.
No use running, she thought. Not yet, anyway. It may have been deserted in Wiskayok, but she was still on Main Street- and the irony of being abducted half a block from the church was something she preferred to consider as a shield. Maybe it was the Catholic upbringing.
Her mind had a few seconds to sort through various creeps and horror stories, before the car came to a gentle stop next to her. There’s a moment of scuffling from inside, as she can make out the vague shape of somebody’s body leaning over the centre console, and the window crank began to roll down. Revealing, inch by inch, none other than Lottie Matthews.
In the back of her mind, it was who she had been expecting. It was one of the only people she thought made sense to be driving a vintage Camaro.
“You know, Lot,” She says, in lieu of greeting. “For about fifteen seconds there, I thought I was going to be the next girl on a milk carton.”
Lottie had, for the soft six years Natalie had known her, always looked the same. She aged, sure- the way a ten year old ages into a sixteen year old- but her face held the same round softness, the same full mouth, straight, dark eyebrows. There was something always relieving about that. The constantness of it. She was so unassuming, in expression, and most other ways, too.
Lottie grinned, the same, pointy canines poking out. “You’re asking for it, walking around in the middle of the night. Do you want a ride home?”
Natalie scoffed, but already felt her feet nudging closer towards the car. “Now you really sound like someone trying to put me on the back of a milk carton,”
Her fingers skim the smooth, handsome handle of the Camaro. She’d never been in anything like this. When Lottie had gotten her seventeenth birthday present last winter- it had been a brand new Mercedes. Natalie- along with everyone else- had gawked at it after a soccer practice. It had been in Lottie’s possession for three months before she totaled it, so the opportunity to ride passenger-side had never really come.
Lottie sat back, with a laugh. Somewhat awkwardly, Natalie slipped inside; feeling more out of place than ever. The interior was pristine. It looked like it was never driven; she could feel the engine idling under her like a stamping bull, begging to be let go. Fidgeting with the weed in her pocket, again, she hoped it wouldn’t stink up the place.
As she buckled in, however, Lottie just took off driving again. At a reasonable pace. “What are you doing out at this time, anyway?”
Giving the other girl a surreptitious glance, she pressed her lips together. “I could ask you the same thing.”
“Sure,” Lottie agreed, without missing a beat. “But I asked you first.”
She trusted Lottie, mostly. It would be a bit silly of her not to, after…
Despite herself, she felt her lips twitch into a grin. “I was picking something up,”
Assumingly, Lottie could fill in those blanks. She hummed her response, a noncommittal acknowledgement, coming to a rolling stop at the four-way at the end of Main, before continuing straight. There were no traffic lights in Wiskayok, not one.
The silence ticked on for a moment, before Natalie quirked her head. “Okay, your turn.”
Lottie sighed, and she could watch as the expression of fond amusement slipped from her, morphing instead into something more weathered. Even in the dark of the car, she could see the slump in her shoulders. “I’m just not sleeping very well lately.” And then, the white’s of her eyes hedged at their corners to glance at her. “I was thinking about asking you something, actually. It’s kind of stupid- but I’ve been thinking about it.”
At the fork in the road, Lottie continued straight. Natalie felt her heart bounce into her throat. “Yeah?”
Lottie’s hands flexed around the steering wheel. She brought the car down to a slower pace as the road became less maintained, bumpy. There was a cagey sort of fidget in her posture, the kind that Natalie had seldom seen- maybe only once before, when Tai had broken Allie’s leg during practice, tensions and nerves skyrocketing through the team.
“I was wondering if it was possible for you to get me Oxy.”
Something constricted and curdled in the back of Natalie’s throat. She felt the sudden urge to cough, or clean her ears out- and then, maybe, to beat Lottie over the head with something of medium-softness.
Rich kids were always the sieve, when it came to drugs. They were the first to ask.
“Lottie.” She wondered if she’d ever said the name with such crisp astonishment before. “Absolutely the fuck not.” The thought of her- sweet, good-looking, world-at-her-fingertips-but-stuck-in-Wiskayok Charlotte Matthews; an Oxy zombie. It gave her motion sickness in a way she had never experienced before. “I don’t mess with that shit, and neither should you. Even if I did.”
The fleeting thought passes her mind to be offended that Lottie would even think she were involved in something like that- but that is such minute importance in comparison to these budding concerns.
“Right, yeah-” Lottie nodded fervently, taking a gentle left-hand turn. Natalie even had the fleeting instinct to feel self-conscious as the trailer park loomed in the distance, but couldn't bring herself to care about that, either. “I just- I have body aches everywhere. I don’t know what’s up.”
“Okay, so? You have about a million dollars, go and get a catscan and every test possible- don’t become an opioid drooler. Seriously, Lot- if I’m above that, so are you. Fuck.”
“Okay,” Lottie relented quickly. “I know it was stupid. I said that. I was just thinking it.”
“Well, stop thinking it.”
With a small jolt, the car came to a stop at the outside gates of the park. “Okay.”
“Jesus, Lottie, I can’t believe this is even a conversation-”
“I don’t need you to get mad at me about it, alright?”
“I just can’t believe you’d resort to that first-”
“Alright,”
“-Do you know how dangerous that shit is? That’s like, ruin your life kind of shit-”
“I said alright!” As far as Lottie went, it was a snap. More of a firm anger pressed behind her voice than it was a bite, but Natalie knew that was a crest of her emotional register. It’s enough to, despite her desire to continue berating, shut her up.
She sat back, blinking, the remaining silence in the dark crawling out around them. Natalie hadn’t realized when they had turned to face one another. During the argument, at some point, surely. But dark eyes blinked back at her, barely able to make anything out through the shadows of her face.
“I just don’t want you to do that.” Softly, the words fell from her lips. Pathetic little pebbles that revealed how frightening she found the notion.
Lottie’s eyes dropped downwards, curtained by her long lashes. A juvenile kind of shame came off of her in waves- but she wasn’t sure how else the girl would have expected her to respond. To accept it, without question? Even that was like a strike to the heart, to think Natalie would care more about pushing a drug than her.
She’d started to sweat. Running her palms across her jeans, she frowned.
After a moment, Lottie exhaled heavily; bringing her hands into prayer position to rub tight, angry circles at her brows. Natalie wasn’t sure what else to say. Or if she was supposed to get out of the car, or if Lottie had intended to drop her at her doorstep. Normally- she would say that the gate was fine. It didn’t exactly feel like a scenario in which she should exit prematurely, however- and she wouldn’t want to.
The car's headlights beamed out into the trailer park. If they were about to sit here for a minute, and hash something out, it would be best that they moved.
With a sigh, at the very least, Natalie leaned over and killed the headlights. Before anyone could come start bitching about beauty-rest they weren’t getting. Not that the headlights would make a difference in that- Lottie was the best looking thing in a hundred yard radius of the park, undoubtedly. Nobody else should even try.
The girl eyed her as she did so, dropping the hands from her face.
Up until recently, Natalie had only given passing thoughts to the way Lottie’s mind worked. It was occasionally off-beat, and surprisingly hilarious. She even felt a kinship to the way Lottie had devotedly spent two years of her life piling up minor offences in order to get herself expelled from the stuffy private school she had been sent to, before ending up in the baffling throes of Wiskayok Public. But she still wasn’t very good at reading her. Lottie had a face made for poker.
In other circumstances, Natalie may take the opportunity to joke about Lottie hitting the Vegas tables if her dad ever disinherits her.
In current circumstances, she doesn’t have a chance to truly think about cracking a joke- as Lottie has reached across the centre console and pressed her palms to either side of Natalie’s face- bringing them together in a kiss that is as startling as it is hungry.
Lottie’s nose collides into her own with just enough force to hurt, but not enough to make her pull away. Just a dull throb. Her mind hits NASCAR speed and screeches to a halt, all in under five seconds, she could be sure. Her body lagging in its ability to match pace, for a few, short-circuited moments, though instinct had her falling into the physicality. Her lips move back, hands first brace themselves against Lottie’s shoulders, before she found that one had made its way to the dark tresses at the back of Lottie’s skull.
Her lips are mostly as Natalie remembered; but more uneven, this time, as though Lottie had been anxiously picking at the skin. Not that she cared. Her own breath probably tasted stale with cigarettes, and in a rooted moment of guilt; she couldn’t help but think about how they were unwillingly compliant to Bobby Farleigh’s an hour before.
This had only happened one other time.
Natalie had found herself starstruck in awe then, as she was again now.
When Lottie’s fingers skim the exposed skin of her chest over her tanktop, she can’t help but shudder under the touch. An electric current that buzzed its way down her sternum, settling low in her gut, moving slow and hot like magma. Sighing into the kiss in welcome to the advance, she bent under Lottie’s hands. Her tongue.
It’s almost so distracting that it blocked her assessment of Lottie’s skin. But after a moment, her mind can’t help but stick to the appraisal under her palms; and it's that the other girl is burning up. Radiating heat like a small sun. Not clammy, there was no sweat- only heat.
She noticed this around the time Lottie had shifted her trajectory to plant wet, open-mouthed kisses along her jawline. The kind that made Natalie’s eyes want to roll back.
“Lottie,” She panted- her voice a thick purr somewhere between worry and want. She was trying to prioritize worry. “You feel nuclear.”
“That’s weird pillowtalk, Nat,” Lottie murmured against her jugular.
Rolling her eyes- excitement and exasperation- she steeled herself and gripped a little firmer at the back of Lottie’s head. “No,” Gently guiding the other girl’s head away- with no small sense of loss- Natalie forced Lottie to look at her. “I mean, you feel like you have a fever. Body aches? Are you sick?”
It was difficult to tell just how blown Lottie’s pupils were in the dark. But she held Natalie’s gaze, for a few long heartbeats, before shrugging.
Natalie let go of her hair, glowering. “Did you seriously start making out with me when you’re sick?”
Silence met her. Blinking, reprimanded silence. And then, “I don’t think I’m contagious.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Think? Asshole. Take me home.”
Sinking back into the drivers side seat with a sigh, Lottie turned the headlights back on, and eased the vehicle into a crawl. Natalie pointed an accusational finger at her profile. “And don’t ask me about that shit again. Also, if I hear you’ve asked anyone else- I’ll kill you. I have sources. Seriously. I’ll know. Go to the doctor.”
Lottie’s cheeks hollowed as she chewed them, gaze fixed against the narrow road ahead. But she said nothing. Just trundled along until she reached trailer #22.
Nobody asks about Lottie’s mom.
It’s not a spoken rule, but over the course of time, it had been sensed in the jumbled fragments in which her mother was brought up.
Lottie’s mother was gone.
Not dead. Just not there. ‘Gone’ was a vacuum in which Mrs. Matthews- if that was even her surname- existed. No real context. She had a brother, too- which Natalie often forgot, until the reminder drifted through her mind like a vagabond on a train car. It felt a little bit like Lottie often forgot, too; or at least tried her best to.
She’d been thinking about this, again- Lottie’s mother- as she watched the girl bend at the waist across the field and vomit all over her shoes. Wincing through the blood in her own mouth, the swollen throb in her lip. It had been a practice of spectacular failures, it would seem. Coach Scott seemed to think so, too, by the heavy sigh that left him at her side; hands planted firmly into his hips, head hanging in defeat.
Next to him, an exasperated Coach Martinez tossed his clipboard into the ground. It clattered with unnecessary force- the quaking, trembling remnants of an overtly male rage that set Natalie’s teeth on edge. An inflated reaction to something that was, clearly, out of anyone’s control.
Coach Scott blew his whistle. Not that anyone had continued playing after that, anyway. Instead, there was a chorus of disgust rippling through her teammates, a few tentative steps towards Lottie where she stood, still bent over. Still heaving.
On the other side of her, Misty clucked her tongue softly. “Oh, dear.”
Natalie stayed rooted with her ass to the ground, but shifted just enough to glance at the other girl. Moving the cloth away from her lip, she grumbled. “Shouldn’t you go over there? Isn’t nurse stuff kind of, like, your forte?”
“Oh,” Bashful, Misty waved the notion away, ducking her head to hide the shy smile spreading across her round, chipmunk cheeks. “No, I- I think Ben has it handled.”
She always did that- called Coach Scott by his first name. Natalie thought it was weird. But it was fitting, because Misty was weird.
Still, she raised an eyebrow, turning back towards the scene. Coach Scott was, indeed, stalking across the field. Part of her wanted to chide Misty on the way she had bolted to the ‘rescue’ when Allie had broken her leg- thought that maybe that was a more exciting, more grotesque affliction to tend to than an upset stomach. But prolonging conversation with Misty wasn’t exactly on her list of priorities.
Neither, she supposed, should be thinking about Lottie going home to her Gramma. Who was so elderly that care would inevitably fall to the housemaid, most likely. But she’d be gone by the time Lottie got home.
There was no mom to take care of her. No dad.
But then again, she ought not to pity Lottie for that. Not like Natalie had much of a mom or dad to dote on her when she was sick, either.
As a matter of fact, she didn’t even have a Gramma, or a housemaid.
“How’s your lip?” The concern whittled its way into Misty’s voice; insincere, and unconvincing in her attempt to be so.
Without even suppressing the urge to roll her eyes, Natalie finally pushed herself to her feet. Practice was over, without a doubt. And she wasn’t about to sit here entertaining Misty Fucking Quigly for the next five minutes while Coach Scott assessed the situation across the field before inevitably calling it off once he realized Coach Martinez had stormed away.
“It’s fine.” She grunted, using the free hand not holding the cloth to her mouth to wipe the grass from her backside, her knees. Across the field, Lottie was clearly performing a failing act of composure. The girls around her milled about, kicking their feet, ducking their heads together in close conversation. The forget-me-not-blue sky above promised to ring clear for a few more hours. She could probably make it to Bobby’s tonight, after all. Give him his cut of the money.
She plucked her way across the field, stopping to shoulder her soccer bag as she did so.
Urgent footsteps behind her promised Misty’s barnacle-like return, some kind of ploy for attention. Without glancing back, she braced her patience.
“Nat,” Only- it wasn’t Misty.
Pausing, she turned. It was Jackie. Who had jogged to catch up to her, big brown eyes flickering across her face. Her brow pinched together in a soft scrutiny. “Where are you going?”
Classic Jackie. She was still subject to interrogation even though she hadn’t played for the last ten minutes. “Let’s be honest, Jack- practice is-”
“You girls can go home!” Coach Scott announced, clear voice ringing across the field just in time.
Impressed by the world’s serendipity for once, Natalie nodded, raising one hand up to praise whatever deity was responsible. “I rest my case.”
Proven right, she continued onwards. Leaving Jackie and the others to collect their things, Natalie made her way to the girls' changeroom. Gingerly, she checked the damage her face had taken in the mirror; a tiny ember of irritation still smoldered low in her gut. Fucking Tai. Needlessly aggressive player. It had been her ball, and then she’d had the audacity to chide Natalie for not taking the pass better.
But it had stopped bleeding, though it was tender, and swollen. Good. Bobby probably wouldn’t try to fuck her like this, and she really wasn’t in the mood.
Stripping, and changing into her everyday clothes, the other slowly filed in. A low hum like honeybees in their voices as they spoke. There was no Lottie. Van, upon laying eyes on her, had let out a low whistle. “At least it’s not a shiner,”
“Wish it was,” Natalie clipped back, only half-joking as she bent over to tie her shoe. “I’d look way cooler.”
Behind her, she could practically feel Tai’s vibrating resistance from chiding the technicalities of her play further. She was a little bit better about biting her tongue around Jackie, however; didn’t want to overstep, sound too much like a team captain. Even though Natalie knew it drove her fucking crazy that Coach had made Jackie captain after Alicia graduated. Everyone thought Tai was the shoe-in, Natalie included.
Secretly, she was glad it was Jackie.
Tai had a lack of tact that would have resulted in fistfights. Maybe Coach Martinez saw that, too.
Sighing to herself, she tugged tight on her double-knot, and got to her feet. “Alright, I’m out of here.” Unconsciously, she found herself scanning her assembled teammates again. Was reminded that someone was missing. Furrowing her brow, she spoke aloud, to no one in particular. “Is someone driving Lottie home?”
“Coach called her Gramma,” Laura Lee answered, a pleasant, unknowing lilt to her voice. “I offered, but he said its protocol.”
To her, that made no sense. She screwed up her face. “He assumed it was better to call her billion year old grandmother rather than have someone here drive her? By the time that woman gets down the stairs, she could have been home.”
“Lottie’s Gramma doesn’t go upstairs anymore,” Laura Lee answered matter-of-factly. Still so sweet, so unassuming.
Natalie felt her eyes flicker to Van, still sitting on the bench, smirking. “Protocol is protocol, I suppose.”
When Laura Lee wasn’t looking, Tai gave Van a light smack on the shoulder. Natalie felt herself swallow; but it was thick, uncomfortable. As though she could feel something calcifying that she would prefer not be true.
She hummed once, short and considerate. And then she bid the room farewell again, before things could steep further.
Natalie Scatorccio.
Slouched over herself, one hand pressed into the bottom of her chin, posed in a picturesque moment of boredom as she turned her head towards the laundromat door. It opened with a gentle ring of bells, the usual. And the jarring explosion or diabolical, Halloween laughter as the skeleton hanging alongside the bells lit up red, began to shake. That was seasonal.
A curious furrow nudged its way between her brows.
Lottie sighed, sopping wet like a drowned kitten as she stamped her feet against the carpet. The mechanical whoosh of a few machines in use filled her ears- including the one in front of Natalie.
It was an unlikely meeting place.
“What are you doing here?” Natalie, despite what might have been her best efforts, quirked a small smile as she watched Lottie shake out her hair.
She frowned. “What do you mean, ‘what are you doing here’? Look at it outside,” As though to emphasize, she swept her hand towards the grand front window. Where the rain had moved in quickly, began pelting the earth, and the worn, ancient orange and white sign proclaiming Laundromat would be losing some more paint today.
“Yeah, it’s pouring.” Natalie agreed, turning her attention back to the machine in front of her. “I still feel like that doesn’t answer my question, though.”
Lottie, resigned to the inevitability of streaking water across the floor, made her way over the linoleum. With a huff, she sat down next to the other girl. “I missed the bus.”
Quirking a brow, the other girl offered her a glance from the corner of her eye. She always liked Natalie. She didn’t know her much, beyond the team, but found herself wanting to. There was some relatability that Lottie felt hummed somewhere within her for the other girl; a kind of ying to her yang of shitty dads and worldview in general. It was the kind of thing she knew Natalie would accuse her of being out of touch about if she ever voiced it, though.
“Didn’t ask anyone to drive you home?” She had bleached her hair after the first week of senior year, cut it to rags. Lottie liked that, too. She seemed to have finally blossomed out of a long, awkward stint. Lost the baby fat from her cheeks.
Lottie had always considered Natalie to be cute, if anyone were to ask her. She had a face that gave surprising contrast to the general grit and vulgarity of her personality, but now, it looked like it all made sense.
She simply shrugged in response. No, she hadn’t. Most people were gone by then, anyway. The thought had hardly crossed her mind.
“I like your hair.” A truth, but a deflection all the same. Startled, one of Natalie’s hands shot up to toy momentarily at one of the choppy locks grazing her shoulder. She dropped the hand just as fast, however; hazel eyes darting away, back towards the laundry. Lottie grinned. “I don’t know if I’ve told you that yet. It suits you.”
Natalie’s eyes dipped back to her, carefully. Even the word was uncertain. As though a compliment from someone she’d known for almost four years was foreign. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. How are you getting your laundry home?”
“I haul moms knickers home in a fat sack, like Santa.” Natalie grumbled, pointing towards a deflated, ancient baby blue drawstring bag slumped in the corner. “I wish I was kidding.”
Lottie hummed, cracking a grin. “That thing looks bigger than you.”
As a small smile split Natalie’s lips, Lottie felt the reward split her heart. “It just about is.”
It was hard to think that only yesterday, she’d heard the rumour that Natalie was sleeping with Bobby Farleigh. Three years felt gross in difference, looking at her now, and thinking of his broad shouldered, sunken-cheeked being. Last time Lottie had seen him, he no longer looked like the football tight end; he looked tired and like he had fallen from a highschool pedestal with breathtaking speed.
Everyone knew he dealt. It was the kind of common knowledge that made Lottie curious as to how he hadn’t been busted. Nobody cared that much, she supposed.
And if he dealt, and Natalie was sleeping with him…
She wanted to ask. Ran her tongue along her teeth instead; staring at the floor, the laundry, the lessening rain outside as the silence wandered onwards.
“You know,” She tried again- though she wasn’t sure why. Maybe she just wanted Natalie to hear it. “I don’t think I’ve ever properly thanked you for how many drunk cigarettes you’ve shared with me over the years, either.”
At that, the other girl barked out a laugh. “Jesus, Lottie- are you going to off yourself tonight, or something? Why are you confessing?”
The cynicism- or perhaps the bravery to draw attention to the behaviour in general- did nothing to lessen her endearment. Even if the telltale flush creeping into her cheeks threatened to give her away.
Shrugging again, Lottie averted her eyes- because she knew eye contact would only make her blush deepen. She had to manage it, while she had half a chance- and instead chose to pick needlessly at a loose stitch of her jeans. “Just making small talk,”
“Small talk,” She could practically hear the eye roll in Nat’s voice. “Right. Why not ask me what I’m doing for Halloween? That’s small talk.”
“Fine,” She pounced back, still smiling down at the stitch for a moment longer. “What are you doing for Halloween?”
At that, Natalie narrowed her eyes. Like she wanted to quip something back- surely about Lottie’s conversational skills. But she resisted. Relented to her own suggestion, instead. “Jack shit, probably. Whatever stupid thing somebody asks me to do last minute. You?”
Nodding along, pretending to consider a few things, Lottie lilted her head from left, to right. As if there were options. But this was Wiskayok. And Natalie’s call was exactly right.
She hummed once, as though making a curt decision. “Same. How’s that for small talk?”
“You excel at it.” With a clunk, the washer began to drain. Natalie sighed.
They never shared final period. Lottie was in Home Ec, Natalie in Art. But with the timing of everything- Lottie realized something. “You skipped last period for this?”
Dropping her head on her shoulder, the girl glanced at her. “Just Art with Ryerson. Not like I’m missing much. And I was running out of underpants, so I’d rather do this.”
“Where’s your mom today?” A stupid question. She knew that. Everyone knew not to really discuss Vera- there wasn’t much need to, either. The answer was always some variant of the same.
But Natalie’s face was impassive as she watched the gurgling, draining machine eventually beep to indicate it was ready to be changed over. “Sleeping, I think. Who cares. Dunno.” Nat stood, grabbing the basket from above the washing machine and setting it onto the floor. With a tug, she began to haul the sopping wet clothing into it.
Lottie frowned. “Want me to call my Gramma? She could give you a ride home with the laundry when she comes to get me-“
“No, Lot.” Natalie gave her a tight smile. “I’m good.” With one hand, she shoved the washing machine door shut. “We both know you weren’t going to call your Gramma to come get you, anyway. Don’t pity me with making her drag her geriatric ass here to drive me home.”
It was, unfortunately, true. And more obvious than Lottie hoped.
Reprimanded, she dropped her gaze to her hands. “Sorry. I didn’t meant to, like-“
“You didn’t mean to anything, Lottie.” Stooping down around the mountainous laundry basket, the girl pressed another grin. The kind that claimed she’d struck a nerve, even if Natalie was trying not to react to it. “And you didn’t. Just don’t worry about it.”
Heat prickled uncomfortably in her chest. With chagrin, she hazarded a glance at Natalie, who pointedly avoided eye contact back; just hauled the basket of wet laundry into her arms. She could see the muscles strain in her forearms as she braced it against herself, turning away, towards the dryers. She didn’t bother offering to help. Just turned her attention again, out towards the rainy windows.
It was lightening up. At least there was that. The storm would pass over them, and they could both continue home, only to cross paths again in the hallways, on the soccer fields.
Maybe the only way they were meant to.
But she couldn’t help but look back at Natalie’s bleach blonde head, as many times as she could.
There was this recurring dream she had; it was sticky, and hazy, lingered like an oily film in her psyche every time she found herself blinking up at the bleary ceiling. As her eyes roved the water-stained spots, her mind would pluck through it, half-asleep, wondering if it was a memory. Reminding herself gently, that it was not.
Natalie ran her hand over her face, slow like the sigh that left her lungs. It was the most bizarre dream; but it troubled her even more now. Not in an atom-permeating, quaking kind of discomfort; more like a mosquito buzzing around an ear. Small, high-pitched, constantly returning. It always felt so real, that she would naturally chew on it for a few long minutes in bed. Almost convinced that it had been something that had happened- though she knew, with the entirety of her rational mind, that the events she was so caught on never happened.
She never mentioned it to anyone, either. Because it was just a dream.
But she dreamt that in the summer before senior year, Lottie went missing. For days. The hushed conversations, the conspiracies, her yearbook photo from the previous year strewn across television sets over America. The one where she was smiling modestly, almost uncomfortably, where the light in her eyes was less convincing than normal but her long, dark hair was perfectly curled. Because rich girls like that don’t go missing without massive consequence.
The quiet mystery felt so real, so plausible, so lived in. As she wandered to the grocery store for milk- most things were the same. Women whispered in the lineup, but life went on as usual. The ditches on the side of the road felt more harrowing than before, and the treeline hid a mangled body- until Lottie, inevitably, returned. Like nothing had happened. With a kind of mute shrug, a vague story. The specifics of which Natalie could never recall; if they were ever there in the first place. She just knew it wasn’t any kind of scandalous-rich-girl-runaway-on-a-bender-with-a-boy story. It was something inscrutably alone. So uninspiring, that everyone would forget that she was ever missing in the first place.
Natalie pushed herself into sitting position, letting her legs dangle over the side of her bed as she rubbed at the sleep in the corner of her eyes.
Just a dream.
Just that dream, again.